Cross-Device Tracking

Follow the customer journey in the lead-up to Christmas

Data, data, data! We live off data.  The more data we have the better off we are.  The world of consumer conversion tracking is rapidly changing.  We’re in a world where people are increasingly connected across a range of devices. We live in a fast paced, ‘I want it now’ society.  Consumers are more often making quick decisions in the moment, provided what they need is at their fingertips. As advertisers, it’s important to not only be there when they need you, but also to be able to track the journey they’ve taken to get to the point of sale. Mobile browsing has increased, time spent in apps on mobile devices is increasing and advertising on mobiles has never been more important.  Here we’ll look at offline conversion tracking and cross device tracking, including the developments in the industry and the benefits to you as an advertiser.

What’s Offline Conversion Tracking?

Here’s a fairly normal scenario.  A customer finds your website from Facebook, browses and is interested in some of your products.  A couple of days later, they see an AdWords Remarketing ad and click through to the site to do more research.  Another couple of days later the customer does a Google search for the product, almost ready to make a purchase.  They click on an organic search listing in this case, and then decide they want to make the purchase in store.  Google Analytics would have tracked three separate visits online, one a Facebook referral, one a remarketing ad click and one organic click, with no goal completion.  The sale in store has not been attributed to any marketing effort, and the business owner is just happy they made a sale.

Universal Analytics allows us to stamp that same visitor with a unique customer identity (ID).  This customer ID becomes trackable from first engagement through to point of sale.  This would link the three individual sessions to the one user, allowing you to measure the full success of your digital strategy.  It also allows us to track that user in store through the use of a loyalty card, app, Quick Response (QR) Code or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag that they scan in store. This essentially bridges the gap between online and bricks and mortar, giving you the full scope of the customer’s journey, and giving you greater insight into the true return on investment of your digital strategy.

How Does This Work?

AdWords provides you with a unique identifier, called a Google Click ID (GCLID), for every click that comes to your website from an AdWords ad. To track offline conversions, you’ll save that ID along with whatever lead information you collect from the person who clicked your ad.  That way you now have the ID associated with that user.  When they make a sale, you can link that ID back to the original keyword and search query.

Now let’s have a look at Cross Device Tracking.

What is Cross Device Tracking (CDT)?

CDT is the phenomenon whereby advertisers, companies and platforms attempt to identify users across various devices, and the devices are many. From once being desktop PC and mobile phone, now we’re talking about tablets, laptops, smart phones, watches, TVs and more!

Why Is It Important?

Remarketing or retargeting is basically impossible without it. Gone are the days where cookies are sufficient for remarketing. On a mobile device they are unreliable and basically have no impact within an app ecosystem as they cannot be used across different apps.

 So How Can We Track User Identity Across Devices?

There are two main types of tracking:

Deterministic Tracking – the more accurate and more exact method is based around user logins across devices. For example using the same email address to log into a website and an app connects the user across devices. As long as a user remains logged in across their devices, marketers are able to target users.  This method requires a large scale to work effectively – think Google, Facebook and Apple.

Probabilistic Tracking – this method is achieved by algorithmically analysing different data points, such as device, location, operating system, time of day and more to create statistically ‘probable’ links between different devices.  It’s an inexact science, however some companies are reporting up to 91% accuracy.

How Does Cross Device Tracking Link To Your Digital Strategy?

Google is the first to know that these days cross device tracking is absolutely paramount for effective marketing. It’s also the first to recognise that measuring across devices is complicated.  So what’s the good news? We are able to measure cross device conversions within your AdWords campaigns.  There’s a column within your AdWords campaigns called “estimated total conversions”.  This column combines the conversion columns with the various estimated conversion types such as calls from ads shown on tablets or mobiles.  The bad news? This data may not be available to everyone. Google only provides this data if they are ‘very confident’ that the estimates are highly accurate.  It’s also only available to AdWords traffic on Google.com and the Display Network at this time.

What Are The Benefits Of This?

See the real world impact your ads are having

• Attribute your conversions to the right campaign or ad group – helping you optimise the campaign and see true ROI
• Take more informed business decisions about where you spend your money in your campaigns
• Make more informed business decisions about where to allocate marketing budget online and offline
• Optimise for mobiles by estimated total conversions by device type

If you’re interested in setting up Cross Device Tracking, then contact SponsoredLinX today on 1300 859 600 so you’re no longer missing out on tracking your customers journey!